According to allthingsD, there was another co that bid with HP and a third co that proposed an all stock deal, don't know whether either would still be interested:

"After Palm balked at those $4.75 bids, the company that had proposed the all-stock-deal dropped out. And Company C suddenly circled back with an acquisition offer of $6 to $7 per share, evidently having determined that its need for Palmís patent portfolio merited the acquistion price. That sounds to me like HTC, which is facing a nasty patent battle with Apple (AAPL), a battle in which Palmís patents could have proven quite handy.

But Cís proposal included a $60 million kill fee and some other conditions Palm didnít much care for. Then the company reduced its bid to $5.50 a share. At that point Palm approached HP and closed the deal."

The patents at least would be still compelling.
I wonder if hp iis talking about licensing webOS because they have already decided not to sell the patents.
If so that would be very bad for webOS future, they might as well open source it.
##%%%****

It is when we're talking about a platform that has already failed, been bailed out, and failed again (well, the last failure is only according to HP, but that's not going to matter to any potential partners.)

Not only that but in that year any potential suitors have further entrenched themselves into whatever their current situation is.

Google just bought Motorola, MS might as well have bought Nokia, and despite anything else, HTC and Samsung are making a ton of money off Android right now. In order to license or buy webOS, you'd pretty much have to drop everything you're doing and finish this operating system and tailor it for new hardware, and so I think the level of interest from companies has dropped dramatically.

Unless of course, they just want the patents, but in that case, the end-user doesn't get much either. They'll just take the patents and kill the OS.

Yeah, jhoff80 makes a great point. If someone does acquire webOS, they will be anywhere from 18-24 months behind Android and iOS when they manage to hit the market. That's not a terribly tantalizing proposition after everyone saw how badly webOS sputtered when it was only a year behind in ecosystem and maturity.

Unless of course, they just want the patents, but in that case, the end-user doesn't get much either. They'll just take the patents and kill the OS.

this seems to me hp's strategy now. They might keep webos going for another 6 months to see if licensees appear, they have to see how it runs on other hardware. If no one appears, they kill the OS and keep the patents. The only hope is for someone to make a bid for the patents plus the OS.

I like the fact that Sahood apparently argued passionately to HP that they should open source webOS for the carriers, maybe he thought getting users this way would then help the mobile tablet division that HP wanted to play in before Apotheker rode into town.

Still, Samsung still being sued by Apple apparently in Europe, lets see how that goes.

A few other depressing truths, as much as I'd like to see webOS on a new phone.

A lot of webOS talent left already. After a demoralizing announcement like yesterday, who's going to want to stick around to keep working on it to even have anything to license out?

And say some company is interested in licensing webOS... How do you trust HP at all to continue advancing the platform? I mean, how do you know they won't just suddenly do another 180? Honestly, the same goes for pretty much any enterprise as well. Maybe it's different, but if I was interested in servers and enterprise software, I'd take this announcement to mean a lack of commitment and look to IBM or something instead.

The only solution would be outright buying the platform, but HP didn't sound too willing to sell off webOS. Or maybe open-source it, but even still, it'd be tough to get people to buy into the amount of time and effort to make it work.

It is when we're talking about a platform that has already failed, been bailed out, and failed again (well, the last failure is only according to HP, but that's not going to matter to any potential partners.)